... Nations Association, of all obscure vehicles, by the end of his final year at Oxford University, in 1976, Mandelson had become Chair of the British Youth Council.(53) The British Youth Council began as the British section of the World Assembly of Youth (WAY), which was set up and financed by the CIA and SIS in the early 1950s to combat the Soviet Union's youth fronts.(54) By Mandelson's time in the mid-1970s - under a Labour government - the British Youth Council was said to be financed by the Foreign Office, though that may have been a euphemism for SIS. Peter Mandelson, we were told in 1995 by Donald ...

... happened. This isn't it. Instead, it's a wide-ranging reappraisal of the intelligence communities in the post-9 /11 world. The book wrestles with these key questions: how is it that the super-rationalist West, with all of the massive resources of the CIA, TIARA (Tactical Intelligence and Related Activities) and SIS, were completely unable to stop a few guys with Stanley knives flying jet planes into the World Trade Centre? How have the security and intelligence forces managed to repackage themselves in the 'new world' of post-Cold War era of globalisation and cultural-religious conflict? And who is benefiting from this hyper-technological world, those ...

... policy, IRD has another"'.(57) The accumulated fragments of information that we now have show that the founders of IRD did what they had learned to do in the war-time Political Warfare Executive - and it remains a source of embarrassment for the British state. Tom Bower's otherwise excellent book on Sir Dick White and SIS contains only one (unindexed) reference to the department. With IRD under sporadic investigation since 1978, the British state has fallen back to the position where, if pushed, it would acknowledge that IRD did use 'grey', i.e . trueish propaganda, as well as the straightforward, 'white', true variety. Among ...

... the upper classes. (In fact, perhaps least among the upper classes, so long as they weren't expected to spy on each other.) That's partly why, when British governments have felt the need to spy on others, and on their own people, they have tried to keep the very fact of their doing so secret – SIS, MI5 and GCHQ didn't officially exist until 1989. By contrast, the CIA was set up by Congress, and has always been – formally at least – accountable to it. Britain came round to the same position eventually, but imperfectly, and only when forced to by the European Court of Human Rights. In other ways, ...

... the Interior. Material similar to this version taken from Pean's book is reproduced in Parapolitics/Intelligence (October 1984) It should be said that while there has been no doubt about the authenticity of the 'Langemann report', it contains a number of what appear to be striking errors: viz it describes Nicholas Elliot as "former director of SIS". We are conscious of the fact that the report in PP/Intelligence may well be the end product of a complicated translation process: from German into French, and then French into English and this may explain what appear to be errors. The Pinay Circle is an informal group which meets twice a year in different locations. ...

... early stages of the conflict, stating that oil was the 'bottom line' in the war. (3 ) The 'intelligence failure' is extremely smelly. ". .. key intelligence did not immediately reach Carrington, either raw, in summary or by way of assessment .. . At the Joint Intelligence Committee level, however, the SIS report (of a firm Argentine intention to invade - RR) .. was considered sufficiently important for the Chiefs of Staff to be informed." (4 ) Tam Dalyell's nose wrinkles at this in his Thatcher's Torpedo (London 1983), and Verrier, quoted above, apparently trying to make the muddle merely ordinary, succeeds ( ...

... a minister also writing letters to selected Tory MPs. When we first met, GKY gave me two files 'write-ins' and 'parliamentary correspondence'. Later he gave me a list of MPs (about 20) and a list of correspondents (about 70). The only correspondent whose name I recall is Bee Carthew, another former SIS officer. Generally 'correspondents' were Tory Party members active in various parts of the country. I would circulate a draft which the correspondents would use as a basis for their own letter to MP/Minister/PM etc. They would send us a copy of any response they received. GKY gave general guidance as to what was wanted ...

... way invented (or re-invented) the computer. The claim is often made that they shortened the war by up to two years. Hastings is sceptical of this, though he corroborates the general view of their brilliance. This stands out particularly by contrast with the stupidity of Britain's main overseas espionage organisation at that time, MI6 (SIS), staffed by 'men of moderate abilities, drawn into the organization by the lure of playing out a pastiche of Kipling's "Great Game", and often after earlier careers as colonial policemen. ' This was natural. 'You wouldn't want to suppose, would you', Harry Hinsley – once of Bletchley and later Master of St ...

... . This is just a collection of essays on recent British history and was initially of interest because of the essay by Richard Aldrich, "Unquiet in death: the post-war survival of the Special Operations Executive, 1945-51'. Aldrich shows how, despite the organisation's formal demise, sections of SOE survived to be absorbed into SIS to play a part in the anti-Soviet operations of the early years of Cold War 1 -- the small-scale British version of the conversion of the CIA from an intelligence agency into a covert operations adjunct to US foreign policy. (Aldrich is one of the handful of British academics who are trying to incorporate the activities ...

... expand its influence across the region may partly have been a completely rational defensive reaction to early US moves in the War on Terror'. Not only was Iran put on notice as part of 'the Axis of Evil', but Iranians were well aware of 'a history of Western aggression' against their country, going back to the CIA-SIS sponsored coup of 1953. He makes the point that the US had no problem with the Shah's nuclear programme ( 'the United States gave Iran its first reactor in 1959'), had shot down an Iranian airliner in 1988 and supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran- Iraq War. Moreover, Iran initially collaborated with the US in ...